FBJ 4 FREIGHT BUSINESS JOURNAL


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By Chris Lewis


One shouldn’t read too much into the fact that DP World’s ports at London Gateway and Southampton recently welcomed the world’s two biggest box ships, the HMM Algeciras and HMM Oslo, respectively. While it is indeed heartening that the Korean-owned Hyundai Merchant Marine, which only a few years ago was perilously close to going under fi nancially in a crisis that claimed fellow Korean carrier Hanjin, is now deploying such impressive hardware, it should not be taken as a sign of revival in the fortunes of the global shipping industry. Ships have to be ordered years in advance and such decisions tend to refl ect the prevailing sentiment in the industry at that time; by the time launch day comes around, things can be, and oſt en are, very diff erent. The task now facing the industry as a whole in the straitened post-Covid circumstances will be how to fi ll all this mega-tonnage with paying cargo.


It may not be the prettiest of structures, but could the ‘Boxbay’ container high bay store system currently being tested by DP World and German engineers SMS Group be the answer to future port space issues? The system piles containers up to 11 high, far higher than conventional stacks and its designers also claim enhanced performance. This is because containers no longer have to be physically stacked one on top of another – as each sits within its own frame within the structure, it can be moved in and out of the stack individually. The main drawback of the system is probably cost, plus maybe some loss of fl exibility in port design and planning – the structure would need to be dismantled and reassembled every time a change in confi guration was needed. But given the high cost of land and the huge diffi culties in obtaining permission to build new ports, Boxbay could be an attractive solution in a crowded country like the UK. Certainly, if ports have to handle more, larger containerships, it could be a solution of sorts.


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Airfreight is seen as a good indicator of the state of the economy, so the latest data from analysts Clive is encouraging. With PPE no longer moving in large quantities by air, the underlying market trend in June pointed to a 6% recovery over May. Moreover, the diff erence between June 2020 and June 2019 was ‘only’ minus 25%, as opposed to the -31% annual disparity for May 2020 versus May 2019. Load factors are also coming up and in fact are at their highest since CLIVE started to measure weekly performance in 2018, although it should be remembered that capacity is hugely constrained by the disappearance of most bellyhold cargo capacity on scheduled fl ights. Not too much should be read into one month’s fi gures, perhaps. There could be an element of shippers playing catch-up as they move essential orders that had to be postponed during the crisis. Nevertheless, it’s a start in the right direction.


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The report by the International Transport Workers’ Federation and affi liated trade unions on the treatment of workers in the cross-border road sector, published on 25 June, makes for uncomfortable reading. It makes all sorts of allegations of drivers being traffi cked and forced to sign false documentation and being forced to live in their vehicles for months on end. The issues have been further exacerbated by the Covid crisis, as operators take advantage of the lack of checks and controls by enforcement authorities during the pandemic, it says. Doing something about it could prove harder than producing a report, however. Like shipping, road transport is a footloose industry with mobile assets and people operating across borders. If enforcement is tightened up in one country, unscrupulous operators can oſt en evade it by moving the seat of their operations elsewhere. As the document relates, many of the people involved are ruthless and will not hesitate to use violence against any driver who steps out of line. Police forces also tend not to take too much interest in seeing that the rules of international trucking are abided by – except, of course, when a serious accident results. Many forwarders do not operate their own transport, but as the authors of the report


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point out, we are all to some extent responsible for what happens in the supply chain. Maybe some sort of international good trucking standard might be the answer, at least for those fi rms that take an interest in such matters.


There is maybe one silver lining in Brexit – the re-imposition of full customs controls could force companies to include full and accurate descriptions of goods sent across borders by road or other transport. As ITAL Logistics’ Phil Denton points out in our news pages in this issue, proper descriptions of goods tended to fall by the wayside aſt er the creation of the single European market in 1993, as shippers saw them as an unnecessary administrative burden. (Despite the fact that such descriptions must surely exist somewhere and could easily be transcribed from, say, manufacturer’s catalogues or the like.) But full descriptions are essential for dangerous goods, and highly desirable for anything that is either valuable, or sensitive. If shippers want their transporters to pay proper attention to the goods in their care, they need to know what those goods are so that they can ensure that food packaging isn’t placed next to fume-emitting dangerous chemicals, for example. Not declaring high value goods properly can also aff ect insurance claims. So when customs clearances are required again for goods moving between the UK and EU from 1 January 2021, it will be no bad thing that full descriptions of goods and full documentation will be needed again – and it is no bad idea to start preparing for that now.


The freight industry is never one to look a giſt -horse in the mouth – Government largesse is rare enough - so the plans to spend £705 million on new customs facilities to prepare for Brexit is to be welcomed. It would be churlish to complain that it is too little, too late, or that fundamental issues such as training have not really been addressed. The same might be said of the recently announced public information campaign including detailed guidance for traders and hauliers explaining what they may need to do to prepare for the end of the transition period. Past experience of government schemes suggest that they have a tendency to state the obvious, but if a few people that haven’t yet been in touch with their forwarder or transporter on these issues now do so, some good will come of it, we hope. Other than that, the industry can do little other than get to work and make things happen as best it can.


Issue 5 2020 - Freight Business Journal From the Editor


///NEWS


FBJ is the only UK and one of the few pan-European Multimodal newspapers. The comments we have received prove there is still room for a hard copy publication within the freighting industry. You don’t have to look at a screen all day!


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